'Super union' chief hails historic day

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The general secretary of Britain's largest trade union has insisted that workers will benefit the most from its "historic" merger.

Last month members of the Transport and General Workers union (T&G) and Amicus voted to merge to create a new 'super union', which has since been named Unite.

And T&G chief Tony Woodley, who will perform the same role for the new union, said that despite a 27 per cent turnout at the ballot, Unite had a mandate to attract new members and do more for its existing ones.

"It's an historic day, and while it does allows us to take advantage of quantities of size and scale we can cut our own costs and start to use our money more productively," he told the Today programme.

"There is no doubt that this new union will allow us to spend about £15 million a year on organising, trying to reach out to those millions of unorganised workers that are still exploited out there and at the moment are not in unions."

But Mr Woodley insisted that the union would not be solely concentrating on expanding upon its existing two million members.

"But the important thing as well is it allows us to concentrate on our existing members. We will be a single union and have single union arrangements in civil air transport, engineering, finance, automotive," he added.

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